"It doesn't look like much," said Ron.
"Looks can be deceiving," said Dr. Elizabeth "Betty" Director. "In this case, they need to be deceiving. We felt that hiding in plain sight was the best plan. WEE tries an aerial attack, they have to deal with everything coming in and out of Dulles. Ground attack, they'll be stuck in traffic and stand a good shot at getting lost along the way."
"Anyway, looks like a nice place so far, but let's see the important parts of campus."
"The food court will have to wait, Ron," said Kim.
"Actually it won't," snapped Will Du. "I didn't have a chance to get lunch, was too busy waiting in a parking lot for certain other parties..."
"Well, you could have grabbed something while you were at Smarty Mart."
"You could have approved a timetable for transport of the subjects that would allow such a thing and you could address me in a more professional manner, Miss...Betty...some sort of reference to your..." Kim and Ron decided that they would let GJ internal affairs stay internal while they still could.
"So, um, do you think this means my college sitch has been resolved?"
"If it isn't, I'm not sure I'd stop you from putting in an application with Gemini."
"Been there, done that, not my kind of boss," replied Ron.
"What is your kind of boss?" asked Kim, who already had a pretty good idea of what Ron would say.
"Oh, I'd say about your height, green eyes, kind of darker red hair, good in..."
"OK, Ron, I get the idea."
"You had the idea when you asked me the question." Kim just sort of shrugged, then the two of them returned to see if Dr. Director and her number one agent had come to an agreement. Apparently they had, or at they had tired of arguing.
"Let us continue the baby grand tour," said Betty. She led Kim and Ron down a nondescript corridor and into a nearly empty lecture hall. "We don't have nearly as many students on campus during the summer as we do during the school year."
"So, aside from not looking the part, this Global Justice Academy is pretty much your basic average college?" Ron sought clarification but was greeted with contradiction.
"Not even close." Will led the tour group to another door. This one appeared to have a rubber floor mat in front of it. "This is a new type of lock we're working on. Many students here help with our inventions. For example, this door can only be opened by a precise pattern of steps on this space. Let me see if I remember the proper code...a jump to the left, and then a step to the right?" Nothing happened for a second, then an agent burst through the doors, allowing Dr. Director to hold the door open for Kim, Ron and Will."
"It's probably best that they not know all the codes just yet," Will told Dr. Director. Kim just rolled her eyes at this comment.
"You're not about to go on a huge 'amateur' kick, are you?" Kim asked Agent Du, immediately slapping her hand over her mouth. "I so didn't mean to say that out loud," she added sheepishly.
"No big, it's just that you haven't accepted our offer yet, and truth be told, prospective students don't typically receive this sort of access."
"Well, 'prospective student' is certainly an improvement over 'amateur,' at least in the sense you were using it."
"I've grown up since then. I hope that you have done so as well." Ron was about to bring up his actions against the Lorwardians and possibly his reduced loss of pants, but he was distracted by his surroundings. It soon became clear why one would restrict access to this particular room. Television monitors covered three of the walls from floor to ceiling, with the fourth wall only interrupted by the door through which they had entered. About a dozen very young agents (Kim thought they could even be students) were at a series of desks in the center of the room, monitoring the feeds.
"Super Bowl party here, anyone?" Ron didn't get much of a reaction from anyone.
"Tempting, but no. Although on the day of, we will have a number of angles of the game. It's kind of a big deal, security-wise. And in case you were wondering, yes, these are students, it's part of the curriculum here. Now, let's move on to housing."
Kim, Ron, Will and Betty left the building and boarded another van. They drove under a main highway and were soon in a subdivision full of McMansions.
"Oh, I see what you did there. Sticking with the whole 'hiding in plain sight' thing again. Nice."
"Yes, we could have built dorms on the actual campus, but we didn't." Will pulled out a card and swiped it in a reader on one of the house's doors. They stepped inside while Agent Du continued his spiel. "As Mr. Stoppable guessed, we are hiding in plain sight. A subdivision next to an office park in Northern Virginia; there are hundreds of both of them. Supervillains, unless they have a vendetta against Global Justice for some reason...I mean, if they're too lazy to build their own doomsday machines, they are not going to spend three hours burning gas trying to find these places."
"Then why don't they just try to fry the whole area?" asked Ron.
"Firstly," said Betty, "they do. Although their main target is about thirty miles east and a little south of here."
"But couldn't you have issues with Global Justice agents going rogue, kind of filling them in on where this place is?" Kim asked, looking around the somewhat spare living quarters.
"That is why we didn't tell you where we were going, why pretty much every mode of transport in and out of here has darkened windows, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Even your own technical support staff would take a while to find us."
"So, to recap: no one outside of GJ knows that this place is here and you've made it too much trouble for anyone to try to find out where it is."
"We hope you're right on both accounts, Miss Possible," said Will with uncharacteristic modesty. Just then, Dr. Director's phone began to vibrate.
"Yes? We were just about to finish up. They'll be here in about an hour? We will see them then," Dr. Director then led the others back outside where they drove back over to campus.
"Ron, Will, you two go ahead and grab some lunch. Kim, you come with me. We'll meet in my office in a little over an hour." The party split, and Will and Ron went off to the dining hall. Will stopped by a kiosk labeled "Bild-a-burger," while Ron hit the nacho bar.
"Rufus, buddy, wake up. This is the moment of truth. Can an shadowy international spy agency successfully duplicate the sublime power of the Naco?" Ron began to assemble his lucrative creation while Rufus carefully sampled the various ingredients. First came the seasoned ground beef.
"Hmm, spicier," said Rufus.
"Is that a 'good' spicier or a 'bad' spicier?" Rufus thought for a second, then just shrugged his shoulders. Next came the all-important cheese. Rufus lowered a straw into the chafing dish and drew out a healthy portion of the viscous yellow-orange liquid. The naked mole rat had rarely met a cheese he didn't like, and that wasn't happening here.
"Cheese!" proclaimed the rodent. Ron added a healthy portion to his ersatz Naco. Upon completion, he found his way to the table where Will had just begun to consume a rather large burger of his own design and construction. Several times, each of them tried to begin a conversation in between bites, but the right combination of both of them not eating or drinking never arose. By the time they had both finished, they still had plenty of time to discuss any sort of business that they didn't want the women to hear.
"So, anyway, about the housing..." Ron asked Will.
"No, you and Kim won't be at the same house." Will anticipated Ron's question. "You'll be sharing whichever house you end up in with three other male students. Your housemates will be randomly assigned, as will the location. If necessary, Miss Possible probably will be able to switch with another female student to end up reasonably close to your house, maybe even next door. If you decide to come here, we go over a lot more of the nuts and bolts at orientation."
"When's that?"
"In about 3 weeks. You will also be setting up your class schedule, your cover job..."
"Isn't there a Smarty Mart around here?"
"The closest one is in Sterling. You would have seen it had we let you look outside on the way here. The nearest Bueno Nacho is across the parking lot."
"So, about half a mile away?"
"Give or take a furlong."
"Now, in terms of classes, what sort of things will Kim and I be taking this semester? Nuclear Meltdown Aversion? Infiltration 101?" Will suppressed a laugh or two upon hearing Ron's ideas about the classes."
"Hardly. The first semester is almost all core classes. You'll probably have some English, history, psychology, some sort of science and/or math. Oh, and Introduction to Global Justice. I'm one of the assistants for that class."
"I figured that would be a little bit beneath 'Global Justice's top agent,' or have things changed since we last met?"
"If things hadn't changed, you wouldn't be here."
"Why am I here?"
"The short answer is currently meeting with my boss." Ron wasn't exactly sure what Will was getting at, but once he got an idea, he seemed a bit downcast.
"Oh, so I'm only being considered so that Kim will come here too," said Ron, who was slowly growing angrier, "and it was you that sent all my applications to who-knows-where, dammit!"
"We did not redirect your applications...dammit," retorted Agent Du in an annoyingly deadpan voice, "but the first of your conclusions is true to an extent. We did not feel that Kim would accept our offer without your presence..."
"You keep talking about an offer. What exactly is this 'offer,' anyway? And if you didn't shove my college applications where the sun won't shine on them, who did?"
"We will explain once we get in touch with your parents, and we are still looking into what happened with all your incoming and outgoing correspondence. Miss Possible has had someone you're familiar with looking into it for a while; he's still working on it, and we're no closer."
In an office just outside downtown Middleton, several recent high school graduates were awaiting a job interview. First came a young woman with long blond hair. She sat down at a table with a middle-aged man in a suit. He had a patch over one eye, and he kept one of his hands out of view of the applicant.
"It says here you were the 'director of intrasquad relations' with the Middleton High School cheerleading squad. Care to elaborate?"
"Well, " said Tara. "We were very lucky on the squad in that we had two visionaries, Kim and Bonnie, they're like poets, like Shelley and Byron. They're two distinct types of visionaries, it's like fire and ice, basically. I feel my role on the squad was to be somewhere in the middle of that, kind of like lukewarm water."
"So you basically mediated disputes between other cheerleaders? How do you feel that would..." The man trailed off as Tara leaned forward a bit. The "businessman's" eyes drifted downward while Tara changed her tone of voice ever so slightly.
"You know, you really haven't told me what this job entails. Besides, one of the things my guidance counselor told me was to maintain eye contact in interviews, and you're making that difficult."
"And I must confess, you're making it hard for me,"
"I can imagine so," said Tara, discreetly taking a picture of her interviewer with her phone. "I think we've had a good interview, I have your card and my contact info is on the application." As she left the room, another recent high school graduate prepared to enter.
"I was kind of spying on your interview," said Ron Rieger. "Now I know how to get a reaction out of him."
"Spying always was one of your strong suits, wasn't it?" Tara immediately fired off a text to Kim and a copy of the picture she had taken a few minutes before then.
"I've got to watch this," said Josh Mankey, one of the few "candidates" who already had a year of college in the books. A few minutes later, an obviously disturbed man stormed out of the room, muttering something about needing a chemical shower. Then his phone rang.
"What the hell do you want? How do you think it went? OK, I'm sorry. Sorry that your 'Operation Find Dirt on Kim Possible' was a damn waste of time and money! The second I get back to WEE headquarters, we are going to have a little sit-down, just me and you, Agent Epsilon...and maybe Agent Zeta will stop by too. He'll know why."
The Possibles and the Stoppables were in Mr. Dr. Possible's office per Dr. Director's instructions. Will pressed a button, and he, Kim, Ron and Betty appeared on the rocket scientist's 60-inch anniversary present.
"Ronald! Take it!" said his father.
"I don't even know exactly what 'it' is," said Ronald. "Wait, is this another of those 'this is our way of telling you' things?"
"I'm sorry, Ron," said Betty. "I wanted to let your parents see the expression on your face when I tell you that we want you as a student here, on a full ride, with Miss Possible." Ron's parents were not rewarded as Dr. Director had hoped; Ron seemed pleased at the news, but his reaction was somewhat muted."
"So, you told them before you told me?"
"It seemed like a good idea at the time. You're not reconsidering, are you?"
"So, what's in it for you and Global Justice?" asked Ron. Agent Du fielded this question.
"Miss Possible, Mr. Stoppable, should you choose to accept our offer of a most-expenses-paid college education, you will be working for us while you are here and for four years afterward. Your independent work may still continue, provided you can keep up with our demands. We are a bit more demanding than your basic average college. Take as much or as little time as you need to make your final decision." Will and Betty left the Possibles and Stoppables alone to make their decision.
"Well, the price is certainly right," said the rocket scientist.
"Says Dr. 'I frolicked everywhere today after I discovered our new house was paid for,'" the brain surgeon retorted. "Kimmie, money isn't everything."
"But Ron is," Kim replied, wrapping her arms around her boyfriend of just over a year. "This may be the only chance for us to go anywhere together, and for him to go anywhere period. We are doing this." Kim and Ron knocked on the door of the office, and Will and Betty came back inside.
"We're in."
AN: This chapter took a good deal longer than I had expected. I do have a decent idea about where this particular story is going, and look for many more characters from the show to make appearances. Thank you for reading and reviewing, comments will probably receive replies.